My Very Own Secret Thoughts

I’ve recently reviewed Jana Wolff’s memoir, Secret Thoughts of An Adoptive Mother. I’ve also shared my own impressions and experiences regarding the issues she raises in two of my blogs: here and here . But I promised myself that rather than just react to Wolff’s experiences and feelings and comment on how mine were the same or different, I would take the time to recall and bring into the sunlight other thoughts I did have during the process of deciding when, how, from where and who to adopt—and through the process of actually doing it. Assumptions and feelings just below … Continue reading

Thoughts of Another Adoptive Mother, Continued

My last two blogs have been a review of Jana Wolff’s memoir Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother and my reflections on my experiences and their similarities and differences with Wolff’s.Those reflections are continued here. I related to Wolff’s descriptions of her family—how happy they were and eager to include this new grandchild, but still recognizing something different. “Being adopted and being of color changed the way this baby was held and welcomed by his new extended family,” Wolff declares. “Ari was neither the first grandchild nor the first grandson, but he was touched with the gingerness of first-timers,” Wolff … Continue reading

Thoughts of Another Adoptive Mother

My last blog was a review of Jana Wolff’s memoir Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother. It led me to reflect: did I relate to her thoughts as she went through the adoption process? Did I have other secret thoughts? I do sometimes wonder how Wolff’s now-teenage son feels about this book. I think that, although Wolff shares her conflicting, not-so-socially-correct thoughts like we all have from time to time, her love of her son and her appreciation for his birthmother come through. Her son may well value this record of his mother’s experience. Still, adoptive parents now are advised … Continue reading

The Many Languages of Mother

In my last blog, I mentioned conversations that have been flying around the blogosphere this spring. I suppose it’s not surprising that in May our thoughts turn to mothers. A heated conversation has arisen among the international adoption community over referring to yourself as “mother” in the language of the child’s birth country. Adoption catalogs carry catalogs with jewelry, shirts, tote bags, etc. which have the word Mother, and sometimes Father or Grandmother or Grandfather, in the languages of the various countries which send the most adoptees to the U.S. Since my daughters are Korean, I’ll use the Korean word … Continue reading

The Month of Mothers

Looking back over the month of May, I remember some very interesting conversations. I also remember reading some very interesting blogs, on diverse areas of Families.com and of our sister site Adoption.com. This twenty-first century method of “conversing” lets us read others’ thoughts, compose a reply with time to think about what we really mean, and read the reactions of many other people who may be very different from us. One of the conversations I read about at our sister site was about Birthmother’s Day. This day began to be celebrated in 1990 when a few birthmothers in Seattle gathered … Continue reading

Reading and Thinking about Birthmothers

Reviewing all these adoption books has got me wondering. I’ve always read adoption books to the kids, but not ones that focus on birthmothers as much as the ones I’ve been reading lately. Over and over I read interviews with adopted teens and adults saying that they were curious about their birthparents and longed to talk about them, but their adoptive parents didn’t seem open and/or the kids feared hurting the adopted parents’ feelings. Social workers now seem to counsel parents to speak openly about birthparents. Recently a spate of books dealing with birthparents have been published, such as Mommy … Continue reading

National Adoption Month 2010

November is National Adoption Month! I won’t go into the history or anything, since that has already been explained quite well in a previous post. I will say that I didn’t even realize myself that there was such a thing until this week! I arrived home from work on Monday to find a post put out by the Child Welfare Information Gateway about National Adoption Month showing up in my Facebook news feed! Had I known that this was coming up, I would have had a post about it ready by November 1st. I have now been made aware! So, … Continue reading

Secret Suspicions

In my last blog, I shared some fears I had as I began the adoption process. Here, I will share some fears I had about the overseas agency and overseas adoption process in general. These fears came from stories that circulate about foreign officials or adoption workers telling adoptive parents what they want to hear, not tell all the fees, etc. I had no reason to fear our agency—except for room and board, we paid all our fees to the American agency, who paid the Korean adoption agency. Nevertheless, the rumors lingered. I was secretly afraid that unexpected delays would … Continue reading

Book Review: Being Adopted

Like Why Was I Adopted, Being Adopted is a children’s book from the 1970s (and has black-and-white photos that look it). However, kids are always fascinated by looking at photos of real people, and this is a photo essay book, with large photos on every spread. The photos are mostly of adopted children doing ordinary things—making cookies with mom, playing music with family, playing soccer with friends, checking under their beds for monsters. A few photos and their accompanying words matter-of-factly show more unusual moments that are part of these kids’ lives: a long airplane flight with a group of … Continue reading

Helping Kids have a Clearer Vision of both Pregnancy and Parenting

I’ve recently shared that statistically, as a group, teen mothers who place their babies for adoption fare better (in terms of staying in school and off the welfare rolls, and avoiding another premature pregnancy). I should also say that there are many young mothers who do a very good job of raising their babies. (To see one of our dedicated blogger’s series on being a young parent, click here.) I admit that I used to think two parents were always better than one. I now realize that being adopted does represent a loss for the baby as well as for … Continue reading